Kansas State Basketball: 8 candidates to replace Bruce Weber as head coach
By Joey Loose
Niko Medved
When you’ve got Baylor and Kansas playing at an elite level, it’s not easy to build a consistent winner in the Big 12. Medved is the final mid-major head coach we’re going to look at (these are alphabetically ordered, it just happened to work out this way), but he’s another coach who has shown that he could turn around a program like Kansas State that’s struggled in recent years.
Medved is a native of Minnesota who got his coaching career started with stints at Furman, Minnesota, and Colorado State as an assistant coach. His first head coaching job came at Furman, leading a Paladins team that won 9 games in his first season to a 23-win final season. Medved then spent one decent season at Drake before taking the Colorado State job in 2018. He’s done really solid work fixing this Rams program and should have them in the NCAA Tournament this season for the first time after last year’s NIT run.
Medved has at the very least put into place turnarounds at three different D1 schools. Obviously, these schools were all mid-majors, and it’s much easier to win the SoCon or MWC than when you’re facing off with Baylor and Texas on a regular basis. Still, Medved has been successful at different places, the geography works out, and he might be in line for a promotion after what he’s done with a senior-laden Rams team. It’s all about if Kansas State feels like he’s the best fit in Manhattan.